Have you noticed that as soon as a you get pregnant, people seem to become obsessed with your baby bump and how it’s growing?
The media coverage of the Duchess of Cambridge’s baby is case in point. But although her pregnancy has been played out in the national media, her experience is all too familiar.
Too big, too small, too fat, too thin… suddenly, everyone is an ‘expert’ and it seems they can’t wait to offer you their sage advice.
In our experience, most people expect your baby bump to be as big as possible. If you don’t measure up to their expectations, you can be left feeling like you are doing something wrong.
Or worse, it can trigger that underlying fear we all have in pregnancy… What if my baby isn’t growing as it should?
It’s not just family and friends either. Midwives still tend to use a tape measure to check your progress, and on average, the size of a baby bump in cm is roughly equal to the number of weeks of pregnancy.
So if you are 30 weeks, your baby bump is supposed to be about 30cm.
But if you are much smaller than ‘average’, you can find yourself anxiously waiting for a growth scan to make sure everything is ok.
The problem is that pregnancy puts your hormones in a whirl, and comments about your baby bump can just fuel your fears and worry.
Add this to fears about giving birth, and both you and your baby get a heady cocktail of stress hormones.
The truth is that everyone is different, and it’s important to remember that ‘average’ and ‘normal’ mean two completely different things.
For example, our youngest son is in the 95th centile for his height, and has been since he was a baby. Being the same height as his older brother certainly means he’s not ‘average’… but his growth rate is ‘normal’ because it has always followed the same centile.
So if, like Kate Middleton, your baby bump is smaller than ‘average’ but your previous scans are ok, just ignore the naysayers, calm down and remind yourself that everything is ‘normal’… for your particular pregnancy.
Bye for now
Heidi
Ps – Staying relaxed during pregnancy and birth can be one of the best gifts you give your baby, and the Blissful Birth programme will teach you self hypnosis and fear removal techniques to make it as easy as possible to achieve.
So why not get started on your Blissful Birth right now?
